Gander and Age

1. Gander and Age Zainab Fatmah Samera

2. Contents: • Age – graded features of speech • Age and social dialect data • Age grading and language change

3. AGE-GRADED FEATURES OF SPEECH • Their voice quality reflects their physical growth. Boy vocal cords generally grow faster and bigger than girl at puberty.Men heads and lungs are also larger than women, just as older people are bigger than children.

4. The frequency with which they use such words tends to diminish , especially as they begin to have children and socialise with others with young families

5. Age and social dialect data • Social dialect research has provided a great deal of information about patterns of pronunciation and grammar for different age group. • A common pattern for stable vernacular forms, such as the use of [in] for standard [iη], in walking.

6. the model suggest that as people get older their speech becomes gradually more standard, and then later it becomes less standard. : Page 176 Relationship between use of vernacular forms and age

7. Example: • in a New Zealand survey, that pattern in figure 7.3 was particularly clear in men’s use of the [in] vs [iη] variants at different age. - 40s used fewer instance of [in] than those in their 20s, or than those over 70.

8. young children in Detroit and the Appalachian region of American use multiple negation more frequently than adolescents, and adolescents use it more frequently than adults. Page 177: Multiple negation in different age groups in two communities

9. Example: • New York gang members, for instance, delete the –ed which signals past tense at the end of word much more often than adults from the same social group, but also more often than those labelled “lames”, young people who don’t belong to gangs. - gang members more often say miss for missed (he miss the bus yesterday)

10. Age and social dialect data • Social dialects research has provided a great deal of information about pattern of pronunciation and grammar for different age group

11. Examples • It indicates that they are high in childhood and adolescence and then steadily reduce as people approach middle age when societal pressures to conform are greatest.

12. Age grading and language change • Before leaving consideration of the relationship between age and speech patterns it is important to notice how easy it is to confuse patterns of language change with speech patterns which vary with different age groups